I Was a Travelling Door to Door Encyclopedia Salesman

So there we were in Edmonton: two crews sharing adjacent motel rooms and hanging out together every night. In addition to the folks I introduced you to last time, there were also Bryan and Crazy Sheldon. Bryan was a former member of the Canadian military who talked about his stint in the army all the time. I was intensely jealous of him for one particular reason: he had been stationed as a UN peacekeeper in the Golan Heights, and I, a Jew, had never even been to Israel. But, aside from his interaction with Crazy Sheldon, I'll write more about Bryan another time. Crazy Sheldon. I wonder what his problem was. I mean, I wonder what his official diagnosis would have been. Borderline personality maybe. Still, a nice guy, and aside from the time I went along with him in almost getting us both killed, he was definitely a fun guy to be around, if you were able to make concessions to his craziness . One of the ways it manifested itself was in his utter lack of fear of dogs. Dogs are on...

When you're on the road with a travelling door to door encyclopedia sales crew, you gotta let off steam on a regular basis. And karaoke is as good a way as any. I'd say that in my six months behind the lines, we probably went to karaoke bars three or four times. And the star on our team was definitely Andy Bailey. He was fearless and shameless. One time he saw " Knockin' on Heaven's Door " on the song list and picked it. Of course, it was Bob Dylan's original arrangement, but Andy did a full-on Axl Rose impression anyway. "Aww, aww, aww-aww yea-eah!" I still smile when think of it. But without a doubt the funniest karaoke memory I have is from when we were at a redneck bar in some little town in the middle of nowhere. Most of the men there were wearing cowboy boots, and I believe there was sawdust on the floor. Ah, but the karaoke machine was off-the-shelf! In addition to country hits and standards, it had every other genre ever made for kar...

Note: This is more or less a sequel to Prince George was Smokin' . The same disclaimer applies. So there we were in Prince George and we'd finished Ms. Crewcut's swaggy weed. No need to worry however; Andy Bailey came prepared too. Not only did he bring a little bit of weed also, but he also packed one of the most unique and ingenious pieces of smoking paraphernalia I've ever seen. It began its existence as a large plastic travel mug with a tight fitting snap lid, the simple kind without any sliding closure or anything. The lid of course had two holes in it: one for drinking out of, and a smaller one to let air in. Into the drinking hole he had fitted the shell of a disposable plastic pen that he had heated and softened in order to make it fit snugly, as well as to bend it to a convenient angle for sucking without tipping the mug or straining the neck. He completed the seal with plasticine. To the bottom of the smaller hole he attached a similar pen tube so that ...

. . . Continued from Part I My bosses, crew leaders, and more experienced crew mates always said that Indians (not the kind from India) were in a special category for travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen. The whole idea of profiling in that way made me rather uneasy, not to mention skeptical, but eventually I got to experience the reality face to face. So there we were in 100 Mile House, British Columbia. I was knocking on doors, and an Indian fellow in his late 50s or so came to the door. He lived alone. I wasn't sure exactly what to do. On one hand, our whole package and pitch was geared towards younger families with small kids, but on the other hand he was an Indian, which is virtually an automatic sale, especially if he owns his own home. I was leaning towards excusing myself, but he pretty much made me come in and show him the product. He said he had grandkids and was interested in getting something for them. Folks, if the customer tells you at the door that he...

Being a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman does not lend itself to political correctness. Unofficially and off the record, our bosses and crew leaders drilled into us the correct profiles of people likely to buy, and of those we shouldn't waste our time with. And a waste of time it was, since if you did a good job of getting in the door (which is a really big part of getting the sale) and spent a good hour or two on the schmooze and the pitch only to get turned down, you've wasted a good part of the night. Ditto if you waste hours knocking on doors in a neighbourhood where nobody will talk to you. So there were two general demographic profiles that we would focus on in our sales: rednecks and Indians. Today let's discuss the latter. (Natives, Native Canadians, First Nations. The politically correct term changes from time to time, but the ones I met were happy to call themselves Indians, so I will too. While I don't go too far out of my way to be super-sen...

It never ceased to amaze me the different kinds of folks who would find themselves knocking on strangers' doors to try to somehow get invited inside to pitch a set of encyclopedias. If you're imagining there's some sort of background or personality type that would correlate with such a career choice, you are wrong. If you're a faithful reader of this blog, you've already met Mitch , Andy , Andrew , Ann , John , Richard , Ray, Gloria , and others. Believe me, in my six months in the trenches of travelling door to door encyclopedia sales, there were many more, and they were all so different . I guess most were from middle class families, but of course Richard had been a penniless Jamaican immigrant. The only generalization that is somewhat accurate is that about 80% of salesmen were men. But other than that, the lovely rainbow of Vancouver's diverse city was pretty much covered. Chinese, Jewish, evangelical Christian, angry feminist, long-haired rock musician, ...

One time back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman we went to Edmonton, Alberta.  The trip was atypical for two reasons: first, it was a big city, which travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen tend to avoid.  Second, two crews from the Vancouver office met up there at the same time.  I'm not sure what the thinking was, except maybe to give us a chance to compare notes and pitches and see how other people do their selling. I remember four folks from the other crew in particular.  The crew leader was a short skinny friendly athletic kind of guy with a big laugh.  He kinda reminded me of Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.  Then there was a  girl   woman  die-hard chip-on-the-shoulder angry feminist.  (How do these people end up as travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen?  For that matter, how did I?)  I remember I asked her once what she thought of  Camille Paglia  and she almost had...